Communication is a key in office. However, these talks can take many different forms: people talk face –to face, over email or text, image or online through messenger or Facebook. So, what an office can do to carry on all these conversations at one place?

Imagine a scenario, you are walking down the street on the way to your shared office, Juice cane in one hand and laptop bag in the other. You check your watch; it is 10:28. You can almost late to your very important sales call. What do you do then? You unlock your smartphone and tap the team chat app. You see the meeting on your calendar and inform that team that you will be late by 10 minutes.

Office messaging app aka the “enterprise social network” enables employees to both collaborate in open forums or informally talk or catch up in private messages. These instant messaging apps have undoubtedly disrupted our communication channels and provided users to connect with anyone at any time, anywhere.

So, how to choose an internal messaging app for your business? What is the difference between enterprise and consumer messaging apps? Is it secure for a company, particularly for a large-scale business and institute to use the free apps like WhatsApp, Wechat or GroupMe for internal communication? Can you trust it with sensitive, proprietary information? These free apps do not have enterprise-grade security and other features that are essential for business. Let’s discuss what are the features you should consider before selecting corporate group messaging app for your business.

Security

Will you ever allow your employees to use their personal email accounts for work? Probably not. This could put a threat to your organization. You would not be about to shut down their account after they left your company, wouldn’t have control over data storage, and you are unable to access potential confidential data. Well, the same thing applies in the case of messaging App. You would not like your sensitive data and information to be stolen and shared with the entire online community. Your companies data should be encrypted, stored at a secure data center where it is expected to meet rigorous security certification. Enterprise messaging apps follow multiple authentication processes whereas security is not so important for consumer-centric apps.

Usage when away from the desk

Corporate messaging app should be very convenient to all. Employees should be able to send/ receive the message even when away from the desk. It is important to use a device agnostic messaging app for your business. A designated messaging app is useful for non-desk worker and remote employees who don’t have a corporate email.

Administration

The administration is a vital component of effective communication. In a team communication App, when you define designated groups like Field Resource Coordinators, Human resource, Front Desk, Sales and marketing, an engineering group, employees know where to get information from. In addition, new hires can be automatically added to these official groups, making on- boarding a smooth process.

Analytics

How do you measure the impact of internal employee communication? Analytic metrics are the Holy Grail to track the effectiveness of internal communications. With communication analytics, you may get a ladder to meaningful decision-making; visibility into the conversations; what is the best channel to interact with employees; what is the best content; and so on. It can help in having improvements in many ways. Whereas this feature is absent in consumer messaging apps.

Smooth communication

Unlike consumer messaging app, business chat apps are developed for the way businesses work. Business apps allow sending company-wide or group-specific messages in-app, ensuring the message gets read. With enterprise solution, you can send alert-style messages and broadcasts that go straight to your employee’s phone.

Customer Support

Effective customer support is essential for a business to treat their clients well. The consumer-centric chat apps put security and non-compliance risk. Only corporate-grade apps offer monitoring, support, and SLAs to its users. These apps also come with account managers and are also there to help with any issues.

Making the decision

The above mentioned six points are the leading reasons why most of the companies prefer to use enterprise app for internal communication, employee engagement and collaboration, rather than a consumer app. So when doing research on which communication solution to select, consider the apps that are intuitive and boast high adoption. Remember, the right app will offer smooth, fascinating design, ability to work across any device and simple-to-use interface that consumer apps have.

Here at Office Curry, we have designed enterprise internal communication app that enables its users to have effective, real-time communication that drives business results.